Article highlighting suspicions about the Cambodian government allowing or abetting illegal logging after the fatal shooting of environmental activist Chut Wutty.

Washington-based NGO Rights and Resources Initiative have published a report claiming that there is a vital link between forest dwellers having rights over their land and preventing deforestation. It points to examples in China, India and Brazil where locals have had a say over how their forests are managed. Conservation groups are hoping to get land rights firmly on the agenda at the Rio 20+. The summit takes place on 20-22 June and will discuss poverty reduction, advancement of social equity and environmental protection.

Environmental groups have welcomed President Rousseff’s veto of key articles of the legislation, but warned that it remains to be seen how effective enforcement of the new law will be. The veto was on key articles which would have reduced requirements upon landowners to maintain forest cover, lifted restrictions on forest clearance near rivers and given an amnesty to landowners who had carried out deforestation prior to 2008 – an article which the Union of Concerned Scientists warned would have set a dangerous precedent encouraging landowners to continue with forest clearance on the assumption that further amnesties would follow in the years to come.

Opinion piece putting forward the case for a credible, reliable, accessible and transparent mapping system for Indonesia’s forest and land use. This comes on the back of the debate between Greenpeace and the Indonesian Government on the scale of forest cover loss.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vetoed some key parts of the proposed Forest Code. It will now be sent back to Congress for another vote before it comes into force. Prior to the President’s decision, the NGO Avaaz handed the government a petition with nearly two million signatures demanding a total veto.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vetoed some key parts of the proposed Forest Code. It will now be sent back to Congress for another vote before it comes into force. Prior to the President’s decision, the NGO Avaaz handed the government a petition with nearly two million signatures demanding a total veto.

The Google Earth Outreach team has awarded a grant to Eyes on the Forest and WWF to host, store and manage map data on Sumatran rainforest. The tool will incorporate a number of layers including forest loss over time, species distribution, conservation intervention priority areas, restoration priority areas, degraded lands and government protected areas. Eyes on the Forest and WWF hope that the data can be used to urge decision-makers to take steps to protect natural forests.

Two ecologists in Switzerland have designed and built a flying drone which they believe could be used to monitor illegal logging in remote and hard-to-reach regions. It was initially intended to video and photograph orangutans from the air in order to monitor their populations. However, on its debut flight over Sumatra it recorded evidence of rainforest logging. Flight launches are planned in Malaysia and Borneo in the coming months and the researchers will make public the instructions for assembling similar crafts.

The Surui Forest Carbon Project (SFCP) is the first UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) project to directly pay indigenous tribes to protect the rainforest. It provides carbon income to tribes protecting the Amazon against illegal loggers. However, Surui leaders claim that loggers have increased their threats and are trying to bribe dissenting members of the tribe with firearms. The tribe hopes that calling in the police will send a clear message to illegal loggers and also encourage other Amazonian tribes to adopt the SFCP model.

The latest satellite-based data on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon shows a year-on-year decrease with 830 sq km of clearance detected since August 2011 compared to 1,268 sq km the previous year. The annual amount of deforestation has fallen by nearly eighty per cent since 2004 due to various measures including increased law enforcement, financial incentives, better monitoring and the rising price of agricultural exports. Proposed changes to the Forest Code could halt or reverse this progress.

As part of its new policy, APP said it will suspend further natural forest clearance on the 1.1 million hectares of pulpwood concessions it owns until assessments have been carried out to identify areas of high conservation value forest (HCVF). APP will also be asking its independent suppliers, who control 1.6 million hectares to accept the key principles of HCVF and comply by 31st December 2014. On APP’s Rainforest Realities website, Aida Greenbury, Managing Director of Sustainability, said “It is the aim of APP’s policy to exclude HCVF from the supply chain”.

Further media coverage on APP’s new policy.

Further media coverage on APP’s new policy.

Pressure is building on President Dilma Rousseff to veto The Forest Code ahead of the deadline on 25th May. The Forest Code reduces the obligation on landowners to protect Amazonian forest cover down from 80 to 50 per cent, leading to the potential loss of 190 million acres of forest according to the Brazilian Government’s Institute for Applied Economic Research. It is being seen as a battle between the increasingly powerful ‘ruralistas’, legislators representing agricultural interests, and a range of other stakeholders including environmental NGOs, leading national scientific groups, Brazilian celebrities and even many large businesses such as Tetra Pak Brasil.

In response to the new policy Greenpeace cited APP’s commitment to protect HCVF in a New York Times advert in 2006. Despite this commitment it has been reported by the NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest that APP has cleared areas identified as HCVF by third parties.

Further media coverage on APP’s new policy.

Lord Mandelson said his work with APP related to the new EUTR VPA requirement for Indonesian companies to supply only legally harvested timber. He said he would be advising APP on how to make the new regime a success and how to communicate it with customers and stakeholders.

Greenpeace Indonesia claim that vast regions have been deforested despite the two-year moratorium on deforestation coming into effect in May 2011. The bulk of deforestation has taken place in Kalimantan and Papua – coal concessions having already been granted prior to the moratorium in the former, and pre-existing logging concessions in the latter. The Indonesian government denies the claims and has invited Greenpeace to explain its methodology.

Feature covering an experiment in Malaysia involving 500 hectares of artificially seeded tropical rainforest. The area had been denuded for tin mining and vegetable cultivation as recently as the 1920s. The Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) is now undertaking a regeneration experiment and using this to understand how best to manage the regrowth of tropical rainforest and restoration of various elements of the corresponding ecosystem.

According to an Indonesian weekly news magazine the Ministry of Environment is preparing a civil suit against fourteen pulp and paper companies – twelve linked with APP and two with APRIL – for illegally clearing forests on Sumatra. The value of the timber only represents four per cent of the damages being claimed, the balance is for ‘ecological losses’. The Ministry of Forestry is opposing the lawsuit.